'Harlesden' means the farmstead of a man called Herewulf.
The Domesday Book of 1086 lists it as a manor, Hervlvestvne – Herewulf's tun, or farmstead; his name is also given as something like Heoruwulf. It began as a late Anglo-Saxon hamlet in a woodland clearing, and in the 16th century it was a village of houses along a green beside Harrow Road.